Happiness

What makes you happy?  Spending time with your family or friends?  Curled up on the couch wrapped in a blanket with a good book and a cup of really good coffee?  Cooking in the kitchen?  Working in the garage?  Completing a project or planning a vacation?

Happiness is one of those topics that is so subjective.  What makes one person happy might bore another person to tears.  And yet, even though the pathways to happiness are as distinctive as the person, the destination is the same for all of us.  

I have been thinking a lot about happiness recently.  What is amazing to me is that not only have I yet to figure out fully everything that makes me happy, but also that it seems to change year to year.  Things that made me happy in my twenties, now holds little appeal to me.

And to make things just a little more complicated, what makes me happy also hasn't changed all that much.  Some of the happiest times are moments I am with my family.  Playing a game at home or sledding down a hill in the winter or watching a movie or sharing highs and lows around the dinner table.  Let's be honest, I don't want to suggest that our house is Leave it Beaver all the time.  There are moments of raised voices...especially when we are running late.  There are moments when we seem to push each other's buttons.  And there are times we all need some space.  But the vast majority of the time, I know one place that is almost guaranteed to make me happy is being at home with my family.  

I recently came across this quote from The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I was happier when I accepted my own real likes and dislikes, instead of trying to decide what I ought to like…. As Michel de Montaigne observed, “The least strained and most natural ways of the soul are the most beautiful; the best occupations are the least forced”

Last Sunday, I asked the congregation I serve to spend time this week prayerfully considering the question, "How is it with my soul?"  So often when things seem stormy in my soul, I try to force things.  I pray more or think I should go on some retreat for a kind of spiritual high.  In other words, I assume the problem is either me or something I should do or something that is in my control.  Maybe the reason why things seem so difficult is because the balance between likes and dislikes has shifted toward the latter.  Maybe it is because I am doing things I think I should do rather than what feels natural.

I believe we notice the traces of God's grace most readily when I am happy.  I pray this week with thanksgiving you will name not only what you are thankful for, but what makes you happy.  And then try to choose to do those things and be with those people all you can.

Blessings!